Bubble Watch

[stever20]

lets look at what teams 40-49 and the 1st 8 teams out on Lunardi's bracket did this weekend....
40 VCU- beat GW
41 St Mary's(auto)- beat SF
42 Monmouth(auto)- beat Niagara
43- Temple(auto)- beat UCF
44- Valpo(auto)- beat Green Bay
45- Vandy- beat Kentucky
46 Cincy- beat ECU
47- Tulsa- lost to Memphis
48- San Diego St(auto)- beat Boise
49- Butler- beat Georgetown

69- Gonzaga- beat BYU
70- Oregon St- beat Wash St
71 St Bonnie's- beat UMass
72 GW- lost to VCU
73 Alabama- beat Auburn
74 Washington- lost to Oregon
75- BYU- lost to Gonzaga
76- UCLA- lost to Stanford

So that is one good thing for Butler- of the 1st 8 teams out- only half won. Of course, that helps Tulsa some as well- as they won't fall that far out now. But even now- Butler is probably either the last or 2nd to last team in- with Gonzaga.

[JohnW22]

UConn went down to Houston today, and is now on shaky ground with a road game coming up vs SMU. Kelvin Sampson is doing at Houston, what we hope to see Mullin do at St. John's, taking a 1980s power that had tumbled, and making them relevant again.

UConn isn't on shaky ground. They were like a 8 or 9 seed and lost to a team in the top 100. It would be better than PC losing to Creighton for example. UConn is still in really good shape.

bubble teams are lucky that Houston had a putrid OOC schedule.

I think a better arguement can be made about Creighton and Marquettes OOC schedule hurting them.

[stever20]

UConn went down to Houston today, and is now on shaky ground with a road game coming up vs SMU. Kelvin Sampson is doing at Houston, what we hope to see Mullin do at St. John's, taking a 1980s power that had tumbled, and making them relevant again.

UConn isn't on shaky ground. They were like a 8 or 9 seed and lost to a team in the top 100. It would be better than PC losing to Creighton for example. UConn is still in really good shape.

bubble teams are lucky that Houston had a putrid OOC schedule.

I think a better arguement can be made about Creighton and Marquettes OOC schedule hurting them.

It's actually about the same. Marquette you can't say much now because they're only 7-9 in conference play. yeah maybe they'd be closer to the bubble....

Creighton the same thing- but then again, like was said about Houston- would Creighton have won those games? They had the #300 SOS, but only went 9-4 with it. Creighton and Houston very similar situations.

[JohnW22]

lets look at what teams 40-49 and the 1st 8 teams out on Lunardi's bracket did this weekend....
40 VCU- beat GW
41 St Mary's(auto)- beat SF
42 Monmouth(auto)- beat Niagara
43- Temple(auto)- beat UCF
44- Valpo(auto)- beat Green Bay
45- Vandy- beat Kentucky
46 Cincy- beat ECU
47- Tulsa- lost to Memphis
48- San Diego St(auto)- beat Boise
49- Butler- beat Georgetown

69- Gonzaga- beat BYU
70- Oregon St- beat Wash St
71 St Bonnie's- beat UMass
72 GW- lost to VCU
73 Alabama- beat Auburn
74 Washington- lost to Oregon
75- BYU- lost to Gonzaga
76- UCLA- lost to Stanford

So that is one good thing for Butler- of the 1st 8 teams out- only half won. Of course, that helps Tulsa some as well- as they won't fall that far out now. But even now- Butler is probably either the last or 2nd to last team in- with Gonzaga.

Lets say Tulsa wins the AAC tournament, things won't look good for Cincinnati when the committee see's they got swept by Temple(bubble team) and loss at home to Butler(bubble team)

[stever20]

lets look at what teams 40-49 and the 1st 8 teams out on Lunardi's bracket did this weekend....
40 VCU- beat GW
41 St Mary's(auto)- beat SF
42 Monmouth(auto)- beat Niagara
43- Temple(auto)- beat UCF
44- Valpo(auto)- beat Green Bay
45- Vandy- beat Kentucky
46 Cincy- beat ECU
47- Tulsa- lost to Memphis
48- San Diego St(auto)- beat Boise
49- Butler- beat Georgetown

69- Gonzaga- beat BYU
70- Oregon St- beat Wash St
71 St Bonnie's- beat UMass
72 GW- lost to VCU
73 Alabama- beat Auburn
74 Washington- lost to Oregon
75- BYU- lost to Gonzaga
76- UCLA- lost to Stanford

So that is one good thing for Butler- of the 1st 8 teams out- only half won. Of course, that helps Tulsa some as well- as they won't fall that far out now. But even now- Butler is probably either the last or 2nd to last team in- with Gonzaga.

Lets say Tulsa wins the AAC tournament, things won't look good for Cincinnati when the committee see's they got swept by Temple(bubble team) and loss at home to Butler(bubble team)

But there- Cincy would have win over VCU which is big, along with a split of Tulsa, and 2 wins over UConn. Also, Temple will fall considerably with a loss(I don't think for a second they're that high).

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

College Basketball Bubble Watch – ESPN, March 9, 2016

Big East Conference

Locks:

Teams that should be in: Butler

Providence fans, you may now exhale. Friars fans have experienced shortness of breath from late January through much of February, a period of steady decline for Providence in which it lost six of eight games and watched its NCAA tournament seed take a nosedive. And while the final three games of the regular season looked like easy wins on their face, that ease came with a dark side: A loss to any of the three (DePaul, Creighton, at St. John's, but especially St. John's) would deal disproportionate damage to a team barely holding things together. Instead, Providence won all three. They spent about a month making things (the wrong kind of) interesting, but the Friars are a lock after all.

Butler [21-9 (10-8), RPI: 43, SOS: 85] - It will be interesting to see whether the offensive gains Providence made during its three-game winning streak were real, or the product of opposition, or a little bit of both. Those are the kinds of casual, next-level concerns you move on to when you're assured an NCAA tournament bid. Butler, on the other hand, finds itself at least a half-step down on Maslow's Hierarchy of Bubble Needs. That's an improvement on where the Bulldogs were a week or two ago, however, and looking back on the rest of the regular season makes it hard to believe they won't get in. This is a team that finished with seven wins in its final nine games, including a sweep of Seton Hall. That got Chris Holtmann's team to a 10-8 record in the league, good enough to avoid a potentially damaging opponent in the first round of the conference tournament.

Instead, the Bulldogs get Providence. If they win, their lack of bad losses, a neutral-court win over Purdue and the aforementioned sweep of the Pirates should put them in safe territory. If they lose, things will get slightly more nerve-racking on Sunday, but they should end up in the field anyway.

Yahoo! Odds

Butler is a 3½-point favorite over Providence. Tip-off at 2:30 this afternoon.

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

College Basketball Bubble Watch – ESPN, Friday March 11, 2016

Big East Conference

Locks:

Butler hardly put its best forward in its brief Big East tournament appearance. The Bulldogs shot 11-of-37 from inside the arc in Thursday's 74-60 loss to Providence; Roosevelt Jones, Kelan Martin and Kellen Dunham finished 10-of-36 from the field overall. That's not the kind of resounding performance on which NCAA tournament bids are secured. Yet the loss also, in a counterintuitive way, placed into view how durable the Bulldogs' strong regular-season finish had made their resume even before postseason play tipped off. It helps, of course, that Providence is likewise headed to the NCAA tournament; margin aside, this is not a bad loss.

Butler's resume -- including a regular-season sweep of Seton Hall, a win at Cincinnati, neutral-court wins over Purdue and Temple and just one (borderline) sub-100 loss (at Marquette) -- is sturdy enough to survive Thursday's ugly showing. Especially compared to the rest of the bubble.

Bracket Matrix – Updated at 10:34 PM on Thursday March 10, 2016

Seed # – Team
1 – Villanova
2 – Xavier
7 – Seton Hall
8 – Providence
9 – Butler

Congratulations to the five BE teams who earned invitations, and best of luck in the Tournament.